Next to the One You Love
by da-angel729
Summary: Lee watches his father climb into the Raptor, knowing he might never come back. Lee/Kara. Spoilers up to "Sine Qua Non"


**Summary:** Lee watches his father climb into the Raptor, knowing he might never come back.  
**Author's Notes:** This is a missing scene from _Sine Qua Non_, with spoilers up to that episode. Written for the prompt **Epiphany **at **lover100** on LiveJournal. Thanks to my awesome beta, Vixx, and as always, feedback and con crit appreciated.

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**Next to the One You Love**

_"There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love." ~Author Unknown_

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Lee watches his father climb into the Raptor, knowing he might never come back.

He wants to shout, _stay; I need you here to help_. But he can't. His father's determined _I can't live without her_ is stuck in his mind. He wants to scream _I can't live without you_ but doesn't know if it's true. He's floundering in his new life; he doesn't have an anchor. His father's all he's holding on to. What the frak is he doing in charge? He doesn't know how to be a leader—even as CAG and Commander of _Pegasus_, he'd always felt unsure of his movements, what he needed to do to lead the pilots and his men.

He feels inadequate next to his father; the absolute trust his father inspired in people somehow didn't transfer to his son. But Lee isn't stupid. He knows he's Interim President because of his father—at least indirectly.

He salutes, and his father salutes back. Fires up the Raptor, and flies it out of the launch bay. Lee feels more alone than ever. He had been sure, those few months ago, he was destined for politics. Now, as he faced Commander Tigh—and wasn't that insane, considering how he'd done the last time—and the Quorum of Twelve, and Tom Zarek, his _Vice-President_, for frak's sake, he wants to join his father. Run away from his responsibilities. But people are depending on him.

He stands in the Hangar Bay during the jump, not wanting to leave his father any sooner than he has to. He's aware of the post-jump bustle of the hangar bay, but is no longer paying attention. He's left his father alone, and he wonders why it's so much harder this time than it was to watch him leave as a child. Lee thinks maybe their relationship has improved.

_I can't live without her_, his father's voice echoes in his mind. He wishes his father hadn't left, and then feels guilty. His father's following his heart, letting it outweigh his judgment. As a child, and then an angry adult child, Lee never realized his father did that, but he's done it several times since the end of the world.

He doesn't know what to do. He's the _President_, and though he knows it's only temporary, he feels the pressure to succeed weighing on him, and needs to sit down. But he stands still, and hopes he can lead.

_You think too much,_ he hears a voice in his head say, and it sounds remarkably like Kara's.

He always hears her voice, interspersed with his father's, when he's thinking.

Lee feels a hand slip into his, and he turns to his right. Kara's there. She's probably the only person in the fleet who knows what he's going through.

"Time to be presidential, _Leland_," she says, the emphasis on the name he'd never disclosed to her. He hadn't wanted to deal with her teasing, and he knows he'll have to now. But he smiles at her. They're almost back to where they were, before. Before a lot of things he prefers not to think about.

"Time to work for Tigh," he returns, and laughs when she cringes before smiling serenely at him.

"We're friends now," she says, shrugging. "Drinking buddies."

He knows that might have been true before her…return, Lee decides to call it, but it's not true anymore. Tigh's been unstable, almost bipolar since the Nebula. He doesn't know what his father was thinking, putting him in charge. But his father trusted his soldiers implicitly—until they did something to lose it. And Tigh, for all his shortcomings, was the most loyal soldier in the Fleet.

"Dad might not come back," he says, voicing his thoughts, and he notices she glances around the hangar bay, and then pulls him toward the corridor.

His security guards—oh, gods, he has his own now—follow, but stop outside the pilots' Ready Room when she glares at them. It's empty, thank goodness, because Lee feels tears forming and tries to blink them away.

She holds out her hand, and he takes it, rubbing his thumb over her palm. It's a long time—in days and miles—since he'd last held her.

"Kara," he says, and just like that, she's got her arms wrapped around him and they are hugging. It feels different than the last time—in the brig, before she'd gone away on the _Demetrius_—but almost the same.

They stand still, barely moving, supporting each other. Lee knows Kara's hurting just as much as he is—his father is the closest thing to family she has left, too. He hopes he can comfort her a little.

After what feels like hours, but is probably only a few minutes, Kara pulls back.

"I need to get to work," she says, and Lee realises he does, too. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. The world settles, returns to normal.

Lee understands, suddenly, why his father is willing to sit in Raptor with only the smallest hope that President Roslin is alive. It's the same reason he'd sat in the Viper on the landing deck after her death. _I can't live without her._

"Did you say something, Lee?" Kara asks, still holding his hand, and he realises he said it aloud. So he decides to say it again.

"I can't live without her," Lee says. "That's what my father said. When I asked him why he was doing this."

Kara shakes her head, as if she doesn't believe him, and looks at him. "What's it like to feel that way?"

The question hangs in the air between them, and she shifts her weight from one foot to the other as he stares at her.

Lee tightens his grip on her hand, and uses the other one to brush some hair out of her face.

"I know what it's like."


End file.
